I waste so much bread because i only like it the day it's baked...and i seem to bake everyday, so, what am i going to do, choose fresh, or that old bread! I find that my sourdough does last more than a few days, i store it in a big tupperware, but i only eat the old bread toasted....just tastes too rubbery the next day. Bread is meant to be enjoyed fresh! Bake Daily :)

I do freeze whole loaves of bread, thaw and then stick in a 300 oven for about 15 minutes to frshen it up....

one loaf (or whatever) at a time - usually SD. I bake one every day pretty much. As soon as it is cooled , I cut it in half, wrap both pieces in plastic wrap and put one half in the freezer. The one going to the freezer is wrapped additional in a used plastic bag of some sort. The bread is always fresh this way and if you don't feel like baking for a couple of hundred years - no worry - you got backstock :-)

Bread stales most rapidly at temperatures just above freezing, so either freeze to zero-F or leave it at room temperature in a plastic bag. After freezing, bread can be restored to near fresh one time by heating to 140F either in a microwave or a conventional oven. The same trick works almost as well for bread that was not frozen.

I bake three times a week and usually make large (1500 - 2000gm) loaves which i divide into two or four pieces: 1 to eat and rest into freezer. I find the bread keeps really quite fresh if wrapped in linen or cotton t towel for 3 -4 days.

grocery "barrel" bags for breads that I want to preserve the crust quality on. Our local store provides bags with handles. I rip those off and put a folded paper towel in the bottom of the bag, and drop in a loaf or two of bread. If the loaf is cut I put the cut face down onto the paper towel. Then I fold the top of the bag down about an inch, twice, and fold dog-ears into the corners to help it stay closed. Bread keeps for 5-6 days going in and out of this arrangement daily for breakfast toast, noon-time sandwiches and/or with dinner.

For other types of breads, where crust crispness is not a "thing" we have a vented metal bread "box" with a lift-up front lid. We store sandwich loaves, soft rolls, sweet and other non-crusty breads in that. I have found that crisp-crusted breads go soft and moist in the crust in that bread bin in about two days. I've had similar results with plastic bags, but that's just me. Others report better results than I get.

That's what I do, and we rarely have a heel of bread for the birds or the compost bin.OldWoodenSpoon

I usually bake three loaves of an enriched sourdough, either 100% white flour or 50% whole wheat. After the loaves cool over night, I seal them in plastic bags and freeze them. There is no keeping problem with that. After I defrost a loaf I place it in the refrigerator without a keeping problem. My bread DOES CONTAIN BOTH MILK AND BUTTER; this makes a difference. Bread made with only the "holy four" (flour, water, salt, and leaven) may have problems in the refrigerator due to hardening of the crumb, and should be stored either at room temperature, or quick frozen.

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